


love is a place

by encanta



Series: old pride [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Childbirth, Everyone wins, F/F, Kid Fic, Margot Will and Freddie are a cute parent tripod, Margot wins, Parenthood, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 16:41:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1612109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/encanta/pseuds/encanta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>margot carries her pregnancy to term and gives birth with freddie and will at her sides.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love is a place

**Author's Note:**

> alternate summary ideas: i do what i want, and/or margot escapes that bullshit BECAUSE I SAID SO.

The pain of childbirth is unfucking real, but Margot’s no stranger to pain. This time it’s different; this time it’s important, and she laughs half-deliriously as her obstetrician tells her “Push! Come on, Margot, push!” because she’d just never thought she’d get here, for a hundred reasons that seem so insignificant right now.

There are already tears streaming down her face and he’s not even all the way born yet, her little boy. She’s so unfit for motherhood it’s not even funny, and the doubts that’ve plagued her all pregnancy are flitting around her skull, dodging around the pain signals shooting out of her brain and down through her spine. Natural birth – she’d been so insistent. Never again.

The thought makes her laugh, another delirious sort of sound that has the doctor glancing up from her spread legs to make sure she’s okay. Here she is, in the middle of all this uncertainty, thinking that she might do this again. That she might have the chance to do this again.

It’s just … it’s funny.

Another wave of pain hits her, crashes down over her, and her doctor’s chanting “Push, push!” a mantra fading in and out in her head, and finally she feels herself give, feels relief and then a void, blood pounding loudly in her ears until her child’s shrill scream fills the delivery room.

Tears of relief gush from her eyes until she is a sobbing mess, and what’s not more than a couple minutes feels like days before they’re settling her baby in her arms.

“She’s crying a lot,” Will notes, astute, his hands jammed in his pockets.

He looks over at Freddie and sees that she’s crying too, trying hard to blink quiet tears out of her eyes until they become too much and she has to use the sides of her hands to clear them away.

Margot’s labor was long, nearing eight hours, and her pregnancy had been even longer. Time seemed to multiply infinitely when you were racing against the clock – or, in this case, a mentally unstable sociopath – to incubate an heir, and the last nine months had been unspeakably stressful for all three of them.

Despite all the resources at their disposal, hiding Margot from her brother had not been a cakewalk.

Even now, Will’s on edge, even though there are FBI agents stationed outside her room, in the lobby of the maternity wing, and downstairs in the main lobby as well. He’d tried to get her to have the baby elsewhere (“Johns Hopkins is too obvious, Margot,”), but she’d insisted until they were both blue in the face from arguing.

“She’s exhausted,” Freddie replies, sniffling hard. He really feels like the third wheel here, even though that’s his baby that Margot’s sobbing all over too.

Try telling the girls that, though. One of the nurses gives him a sympathetic look before he’s elbowed out of the way, Freddie descending on Margot so she can kiss her forehead and shove her mussed hair out of her face.

“You did it,” she says, voice low and reverent in Margot’s ear, petting her hair as they both stare wide-eyed and in awe at the child on her chest.

Will makes his way over toward the bed, looking down at their son. He’s quiet now, but alert, swaddled tight in a receiving blanket, cheek turned toward Margot in search of her breast. He gets elbowed out of the way _again_ as a nurse comes over to show her how to feed him. He feels out of place, like he’s witnessing something that’s not his to witness.

The look Freddie gives him doesn’t help (it rarely ever does). There are still idle tears falling onto Margot’s cheeks but her smile is a thousand watts, brighter even than the lights in the birthing suite that’s cost them all a combined arm and leg.

“Max,” Margot says finally, her voice quiet so as not to disturb the baby as he nurses. “I like Max. Do you guys like Max?”

They both nod fervently, because even if they don’t like it, neither of them are going to disagree with her.

Margot looks down at Max, a watery smile on her face. She is terrified. So, so terrified, of being a mother and everything it entails, those natural, normal fears that plague every pregnant woman, but she is also afraid that she’s done something terrible by bringing this beautiful cherub into a world so full of horrors. She looks up at Will and thinks he might be thinking the same thing.

Most of her pregnancy she’d spent referring to Max as her heir. He was her golden ticket, her salvation from Mason’s savagery. Now, her brain’s singing a different tune. That cynical, broken part of her wants to blame the hormones, the oxytocin coursing through her from the skin to skin contact with her baby, but she is so much more than that part of her and her son is so much more than a means to an end. She will make Mason suffer and she’ll do it with relish, not for herself but for Max. She’ll be her child’s salvation from the black stain that is the Verger name.

They all will be.

She leans back a bit, tucking Max securely against her chest, then reaches out tiredly for Freddie and Will, grabbing at their hands and squeezing tight. “This is it,” she says, feeling like she’s giving a pep-talk, or heading into war. “This is your last chance to get out. You can walk out that door once and for all, no harm, no foul. Neither of you have to be a part of this, because I can assure you that it’ll get messy.” And she’s not even talking about diapers.

They both look affronted.

“We’re not going anywhere,” Freddie says, resolute, fingers combing slowly through Margot’s hair before she reaches up gently to touch the back of Max’s hat-covered head. “Not in a million years.”

“We’re right here,” Will agrees, kneeling down next to Margot’s bedside, staring fondly at his son’s face. It’s hypnotic, almost, the calm that descends over him in that little room, the three of them breathing shallowly as they watch Max in his first hour of life. It’s an unconventional arrangement, the three of them. But, Will thinks, as his eyes sweep over the sweet curve of Max's plump cheek, perhaps three people who’d otherwise be totally incapable of parenting anything could make an incredible set of parents.

He hopes so, at least. For the sake of their son.

Eventually, the sun drops low in the sky, casting wide shadows on the wall of the birthing suite as Margot and Max doze, both tuckered out from the birth. Freddie and Will sit in comfortable silence together, watching the two of them, the first of many vigils they’ll keep in order to protect the most important people in their lives.

After awhile, Freddie breaks the silence. “Well done, Graham.”

“You too, Lounds.”

 


End file.
